Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher Part 20

Owing to the limitation of our intelligence, we cannot deny but that

"In the eye of G.o.d Pain may have purpose and be justified."

But whether it has its purpose for the supreme intelligence or not,

"Man's sense avails to only see, in pain, A hateful chance no man but would avert Or, failing, needs must pity."[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]

Man must condemn evil, he cannot acquiesce in its permanence, but is, spite of his consciousness of ignorance and powerlessness, roused into constant revolt against it.

"True, he makes nothing, understands no whit: Had the initiator-spasm seen fit Thus doubly to endow him, none the worse And much the better were the universe.

What does Man see or feel or apprehend Here, there, and everywhere, but faults to mend, Omissions to supply,--one wide disease Of things that are, which Man at once would ease Had will but power and knowledge?"[A]

[Footnote A: _Francis Furini_.]

But the moral worth of man does not suffer the least detraction from his inability to effect his benevolent purpose. "Things must take will for deed," as Browning tells us. David is not at all distressed by the consciousness of his weakness.

"Why is it I dare Think but lightly of such impuissance? What stops my despair?

This;--'tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do."[B]

[Footnote B: _Saul_.]

The fact that "his wishes fall through," that he cannot, although willing, help Saul, "grow poor to enrich him, fill up his life by starving his own," does not prevent him from regarding his "service as perfect." The will was there, although it lacked power to effect itself.

The moral worth of an action is complete, if it is willed; and it is nowise affected by its outer consequences, as both Browning and Kant teach. The loving will, the inner act of loving, though it can bear no outward fruit, being debarred by outward impediment, is still a complete and highest good.

"But Love is victory, the prize itself: Love--trust to! Be rewarded for the trust In trust's mere act. In love success is sure, Attainment--no delusion, whatso'er The prize be: apprehended as a prize, A prize it is."[A]

[Footnote A: _A Pillar at Sebzevar_.]

Whatever the evil in the world and the impotence of man, his duty and his dignity in willing to perform it, are ever the same. Though G.o.d neglect the world

"Man's part Is plain--to send love forth,--astray, perhaps: No matter, he has done his part."[B]

[Footnote B: _The Sun_.]

Now, this fact of inner experience, which the poet thinks incontrovertible--the fact that man, every man, necessarily regards evil, whether natural or moral, as something to be annulled, were it only possible--is an immediate proof of the indwelling of that which is highest in man. On this basis, Browning is able to re-establish the optimism which, from the side of knowledge, he had utterly abandoned.

The very fact that the world is condemned by man is proof that there dwells in man something better than the world, whose evidence the pessimist himself cannot escape. All is not wrong, as long as wrong _seems_ wrong. The pessimist, in condemning the world, must except himself. In his very charge against G.o.d of having made man in His anger, there lies a contradiction; for he himself fronts and defies the outrage. There is no depth of despair which this good cannot illumine with joyous light, for the despair is itself the reflex of the good.

"Were earth and all it holds illusions mere, Only a machine for teaching love and hate, and hope and fear,

"If this life's conception new life fail to realize-- Though earth burst and proved a bubble gla.s.sing hues of h.e.l.l, one huge Reflex of the devil's doings--G.o.d's work by no subterfuge,"[A]

[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_.]

still, good is good, and love is its own exceeding great reward. Alone, in a world abandoned to chaos and infinite night, man is still not without G.o.d, if he loves. In virtue of his love, he himself would be crowned as G.o.d, as the poet often argues, were there no higher love elsewhere.

"If he believes Might can exist with neither will nor love, In G.o.d's case--what he names now Nature's Law-- While in himself he recognizes love No less than might and will,"[B]

[Footnote B: _Death in the Desert_.]

man takes, and rightly takes, the t.i.tle of being "First, last, and best of things."

"Since if man prove the sole existent thing Where these combine, whatever their degree, However weak the might or will or love, So they be found there, put in evidence-- He is as surely higher in the scale Than any might with neither love nor will, As life, apparent in the poorest midge, Is marvellous beyond dead Atlas' self, Given to the n.o.bler midge for resting-place!

Thus, man proves best and highest--G.o.d, in fine."[A]

[Footnote A: _A Death in the Desert_.]

To any one capable of spiritually discerning things, there can be no difficulty in regarding goodness, however limited and mated with weakness, as infinitely above all natural power. Divinity will be known to consist, not in any senseless might, however majestic and miraculous, but in moral or spiritual perfection. If G.o.d were indifferent to the evil of the world, acquiesced in it without reason, and let it ripen into all manner of wretchedness, then man, in condemning the world, though without power to remove the least of its miseries, would be higher than G.o.d. But we have still to account for the possibility of man's a.s.suming an att.i.tude implied in the consciousness that, while he is without power, G.o.d is without pity, and in the despair which springs from his hate of evil. How comes it that human nature rises above its origin, and is able--nay, obliged--to condemn the evil which G.o.d permits? Is man finite in power, a mere implement of a mocking will so far as knowledge goes, the plaything of remorseless forces, and yet author and first source of something in himself which invests him with a dignity that G.o.d Himself cannot share? Is the moral consciousness which, by its very nature, must bear witness against the Power, although it cannot arrest its pitiless course, or remove the least evil,

"Man's own work, his birth of heart and brain, His native grace, no alien gift at all?"

We are thus caught between the horns of a final dilemma. Either the pity and love, which make man revolt against all suffering, are man's own creation; or else G.o.d, who made man's heart to love, has given to man something higher than He owns Himself. But both of these alternatives are impossible.

"Here's the touch that breaks the bubble."

The first alternative is impossible, because man is by definition powerless, a mere link in the endless chain of causes, incapable of changing the least part of the scheme of things which he condemns, and therefore much more unable to initiate, or to bring into a loveless world abandoned to blind power, the n.o.ble might of love.

"Will of man create?

No more than this my hand, which strewed the beans Produced them also from its finger-tips."[A]

[Footnote A: _A Bean-Stripe_.]

All that man is and has is a mere loan; his love no less than his finite intellect and limited power, has had its origin elsewhere.

"Back goes creation to its source, source prime And ultimate, the single and the sole."[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]

The argument ends by bringing us back

"To the starting-point,-- Man's impotency, G.o.d's omnipotence, These stop my answer."[A]

[Footnote A: _A Bean-Stripe_.]

I shall not pause at present to examine the value of this new form of the old argument, "_Ex contingentia mundi_." But I may point out in pa.s.sing, that the reference of human love to a divine creative source is accomplished by means of the idea of cause, one of the categories of the thought which Browning has aspersed. And it is a little difficult to show why, if we are constrained to doubt our thought, when by the aid of causality it establishes a connection between finite and finite, we should regard it as worthy of trust when it connects the finite and the infinite. In fact, it is all too evident that the poet a.s.sumes or denies the possibility of knowledge, according as it helps or hinders his ethical doctrine.

But, if we grant the ascent from the finite to the infinite and regard man's love as a divine gift--which it may well be although the poet's argument is invalid--then a new light is thrown upon the being who gave man this power to love. The "necessity," "the mere power," which alone could be discerned by observation of the irresistible movement of the world's events, acquires a new character. Prior to this discovery of love in man as the work of G.o.d--

"Head praises, but heart refrains From loving's acknowledgment.

Whole losses outweigh half-gains: Earth's good is with evil blent: Good struggles but evil reigns."[A]

[Footnote A: _Reverie_--_Asolando_.]

But love in man is a suggestion of a love without; a proof, in fact, that G.o.d is love, for man's love is G.o.d's love in man. The source of the pity that man shows, and of the apparent evils in the world which excite it, is the same. The power which called man into being, itself rises up in man against the wrongs in the world. The voice of the moral consciousness, approving the good, condemning evil, and striving to annul it, is the voice of G.o.d, and has, therefore, supreme authority. We do wrong, therefore, in thinking that it is the weakness of man which is matched against the might of evil in the world, and that we are fighting a losing battle. It is an incomplete, abstract, untrue view of the facts of life which puts G.o.d as irresistible Power in the outer world, and forgets that the same irresistible Power works, under the higher form of love, in the human heart.

"Is not G.o.d now i' the world His power first made?